Undersized CCI Primers

.223Savage

.223Savage

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I have been having problems with CCI small rifle primers #400 in some .223 brass I am reloading. The primers pockets have been very loose, some of the primers even falling out of the pockets. No problem I thought and tossed them into the scrap bucket.

After finding several more I began to think a bit about this, my loads are not hot and I have never had .223 pockets become loose before. I measured the primers and was a bit surprised at the the variance in diameter, from .1715" to .175". Not surprisingly the small ones were very loose and the .175" dia. ones were snug in the pockets.

It seems that the .0035" is the difference between snug and loose in the pockets.

I checked the SAAMI site to see if there is an "Industry Standard" diameter but could not find any measurements for them. Another site listed a diameter of .1753" to .1757", depending on the manufacturer, for small rifle primers.

I measured more of the primers and found about 50% below the .175", many around .172" -.173".

Do I have a bunch of undersized primers that got missed by CCI's quality control or is this normal and do I continue to scrap lots of brass?

Your experience, thoughts and insightful comments are appreciated.
 
That's a lot of variance, I just measured some Federal small rifle primers and they went from .1753" to .1758". Could the small ones be out of round ie egg shaped? If not I think the stamping machine dies must have been out of whack when you primers were made.
 
If you go to the cci site in the top right corner you can contact them by email.sounds as thow they got missed at quality control.
 
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